Future Control Room Improvements: Government Update on Fire And
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Future Control Room Improvements - Government update on fire and rescue authority schemes Ex-Fire Regional Control Centres - marketing and disposal March 2015 update March 2015 Department for Communities and Local Government © Crown copyright, 2015 Copyright in the typographical arrangement rests with the Crown. You may re-use this information (not including logos) free of charge in any format or medium, under the terms of the Open Government Licence. To view this licence, www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open- government-licence/ or write to the Information Policy Team, The National Archives, Kew, London TW9 4DU, or email: [email protected]. This document/publication is also available on our website at www.gov.uk/dclg If you have any enquiries regarding this document/publication, email [email protected] or write to us at: Department for Communities and Local Government Fry Building 2 Marsham Street London SW1P 4DF Telephone: 030 3444 0000 For all our latest news and updates follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/CommunitiesUK March 2015 ISBN: 978-1-4098-4494-5 Contents Page Document purpose 6 Pre-FiReControl 7 FiReControl 7 The Future Control Rooms Services Scheme 8 Summary Assessment 8 Project completion and progress 8 Map – Project partnerships between fire and rescue authorities 9 Map – Coverage that will be provided as the control room 10 projects complete Delivery of the resilience benefits 12 Financial benefits 14 Comparing the benefits to FiReControl - Resilience of the 15 system now Locally delivered projects helping to secure national resilience 17 Delivery arrangements Analysis 21 Timescales for completing the improvements 21 How the timescales for completing the improvements compare with the 22 summary of March 2012 Planned resilience improvements 26 Progress against the October 2009 baseline and March 2015 delivery date 27 Additional benefits 29 How the financial benefits compare with the summary of March 2012 30 3 Fire and rescue authorities’ summaries Avon 32 Cambridgeshire and Suffolk 33 Cleveland 35 Cornwall (covering Isles of Scilly), and North Yorkshire 37 Derbyshire, Leicestershire, and Nottinghamshire 39 Devon and Somerset, Dorset, Hampshire, and Wiltshire 41 Durham and Darlington 45 East Sussex, and West Sussex 47 Essex, and Bedfordshire 50 Gloucestershire 52 Hereford and Worcester, Shropshire and Wrekin 53 Hertfordshire, Humberside, Lincolnshire, and Norfolk 55 Kent and Medway 58 London 60 Manchester, Cheshire, Lancashire, and Cumbria 62 Merseyside 64 Northamptonshire, and Warwickshire 66 Oxfordshire, Royal Berkshire, and Buckinghamshire and 68 Milton Keynes South Yorkshire, and West Yorkshire 71 Staffordshire, and West Midlands 73 Surrey, and Isle of Wight 76 Tyne and Wear, and Northumberland 79 4 Annex A: Ex-Fire Regional Control Centres – marketing and disposal 81 Annex B: How the grant was allocated 84 Annex C: The Chief Fire Officers Association National Resilience 88 Support Team Annex D: Benefits that will be secured by the improvements 89 Annex E: Glossary 93 5 Document purpose 1. The previous Administration’s failed FiReControl project was closed in December 2010. The legacy for the Department for Communities and Local Government was to market and dispose of the empty Regional Control Centres, and to consider how best to deliver the necessary improvements to the efficiency and resilience of fire control rooms. 2. It is six months since the Department published the last progress updates1. Based on updated information, this document provides a summary of the progress being made to market and dispose of the remaining Regional Control Centres (see Annex A), and of the improvements being delivered by the Future Control Room projects, delivery dates, resilience benefits, projected savings, and additional benefits the project partnerships have identified. 3. The information presented in this document shows that: Five of the nine remaining Regional Control Centres have been sub-let or transferred (Durham, Warrington, London, Fareham and Wolverhampton), and the annual cost of the vacant sites has been reduced by reducing the cost of maintenance. Interest from two separate private sector organisations in two of the sites is being investigated. The two remaining centres continue to be actively marketed. And the 22 Future Control Room Projects continue to make steady progress: o Two further projects have completed, bringing the total number of projects that have now completed to six, or 27% of the projects. In addition, three projects are on track to complete shortly following publication of this document (bringing completion to 41%), and a further four projects are expected to complete by the end of June (59% completion). o Three projects are estimating completion in 2016, two at the beginning and one towards the end of the year. Delivery of the final project will complete the programme as a whole. These three projects are discussed in more detail at paragraphs 18 and 47 below. 1 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/future-control-room-services-scheme-summary- national-picture-of-fire-and-rescue-authority-improvement-plans 6 o Although total project completion is less than expected at this stage at 27%, this does not provide the full picture: 66%, or two thirds, of the resilience benefits projected to be in place when the Scheme completes are now in place. In addition, since the last update there have been further increases in eight of the resilience benefits identified, with significant increases of 10% or more in three of those. o Projected savings now stand at £135 million. This is £5 million more than reported in the previous update. Pre-FiReControl 4. Prior to the FiReControl project, all of the 46 Fire and Rescue Services had a main Control Room and at least one separate fallback control with different systems and technology in each. Each Control Room operated on a standalone basis with no networking capabilities for fallback and could not readily make use of spare capacity within other Controls should they become overwhelmed with calls or suffer a system failure. In short, resilience and business continuity arrangements were not appropriate for the risk faced by an emergency service: Caller locations could not be automatically identified and relied on the intervention of the British Telecom Emergency Operators to provide subscriber details, leading to delays in mobilisations. There was limited use of data and the mobilising operation relied heavily on voice communications and manual processes. Systems were unable to provide accurate location details for resources, so relied on pre-populated information which could not identify the nearest, most appropriate, resource to mobilise. FiReControl 5. FiReControl aimed to replace England’s 46 standalone fire and rescue control rooms with a national network of nine regional control centres. It sought to improve Operations by introducing state of the art technology and similar ways of working across nine Regional Control Centres. 6. If FiReControl had been successful it would have provided a single, resilient, national control system, underpinned by common ways of working and operating procedures. It was expected to deliver significant resilience and efficiency benefits in terms of reduced numbers of control rooms, and the ability to mobilise resources from any part of the country. It proved to be an overly ambitious and undeliverable project, and was closed down in December 2010. 7 The Future Control Room Services Scheme 7. While the FiReControl project was not delivered it was accepted that the changes and benefits programmed for delivery were still relevant to a modern Fire and Rescue Service. The Department consulted on the future of fire and rescue control services in January 2011. The overwhelming response to the consultation was that improvements to control rooms remained important, and that locally determined solutions, with central Government support, were the preferred way forward. 8. To deliver these, Government made £81 million available for local improvements. The purpose of the grant was to help fire and rescue authorities improve the efficiency and strengthen the resilience of their local control services, and their ability to interoperate with each other and with other emergency services, thereby strengthening resilience at all levels. 9. 23 bids were received from 44 of the 46 fire and rescue authorities in England, including 15 bids from partnerships of more than one fire and rescue authority. The bids were assessed against clear criteria for technical functionality, interoperability and resilience, efficiency and value for money (tables showing how the £81.187 million has been allocated are at Annex B). Summary Assessment Project completion and progress 10. The two projects that have completed since the previous update are: Durham and Darlington, Hereford and Worcester, and Shropshire and Wrekin. 11. This brings the total number of projects who have completed to six, or 27% of the projects. This equates to 13 fire and rescue authorities, or 29% of the fire and rescue authorities completing their control rooms projects. 12. The maps on the following page show: i. the project partnerships that have been formed between the fire and rescue authorities; and ii. the coverage provided by the completed projects in England, and the coverage that will be provided as the remaining projects complete. 8 The project partnerships between fire and rescue authorities 9 Coverage that will be provided as the